Is total wattage for the light fixture or the circuit?

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Hi, apologies for what may be a dumb question!

I'm planning to upgrade a broken dimmer switch which was rated up to 250w with an LED-compatible one (the Varilight JQP401W), which is apparently only rated up to 120w.

I initially assumed this would be fine as the switch only controls a single light fixture with a single 100w bulb (and presumably the bulb's wattage will be even lower in the future if I'm using an LED one).

However, all the lighting in my house is on the one circuit (i.e. one switch in the fuse box controls all of it), so the total wattage on that circuit is fairly high.

With this in mind, is moving to a dimmer with a lower rating likely to cause problems? Or am I right in thinking that only the wattage of the bulb the switch controls is what matters, regardless of what else is on the circuit?

Any advice is appreciated!
 
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Yes, only the Wattage of the lights the dimmer controls.

Be aware some dimmers also have a minimum Wattage.

Dimmer and LEDs must be compatible.
 
Yes, only the Wattage of the lights the dimmer controls.

Be aware some dimmers also have a minimum Wattage.

Dimmer and LEDs must be compatible.

Great, thanks for the advice! Apparently the JQP401W is rated 1-120w so I should be fine there.

Get rid of that 100W thing now.
When it fails, it will probably destroy the dimmer.
It also uses 10x more electricity than an equivalent LED.

Will do; I'm trying to get to a point where I can just swap the old bulb out for the LED equivalent. I just want to make sure an LED-compatible dimmer will be safe to use first!
 
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Get rid of that 100W thing now.
When it fails, it will probably destroy the dimmer.
It also uses 10x more electricity than an equivalent LED.
For a vastly inferior quality of light source.
 

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